Philip I, called the Amorous, was King of the Franks from 1060 to 1108. His reign, like that of most of the early Capetians, was extraordinarily long for the time. The monarchy began a modest recovery from the low it had reached during the reign of his father, Henry I, and he added the Vexin region and the viscountcy of Bourges to his royal domaine.
Raymond of Saint-Gilles, also called Raymond IV of Toulouse or Raymond I of Tripoli, was the count of Toulouse, duke of Narbonne, and margrave of Provence from 1094, and one of the leaders of the First Crusade from 1096 to 1099. He spent the last five years of his life establishing the County of Tripoli in the Near East.
Baldwin II, also known as Baldwin of Bourcq or Bourg, was Count of Edessa from 1100 to 1118, and King of Jerusalem from 1118 until his death. He accompanied Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin of Boulogne to the Holy Land during the First Crusade. He succeeded Baldwin of Boulogne as the second count of Edessa when he left the county for Jerusalem following his brother's death. He was captured at the Battle of Harran in 1104. He was held first by Sökmen of Mardin, then by Jikirmish of Mosul, and finally by Jawali Saqawa. During his captivity, Tancred, the Crusader ruler of the Principality of Antioch, and Tancred's cousin, Richard of Salerno, governed Edessa as Baldwin's regents.
The Principality of Antioch was one of the Crusader states created during the First Crusade which included parts of Anatolia and Syria. The principality was much smaller than the County of Edessa or the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It extended around the northeastern edge of the Mediterranean, bordering the County of Tripoli to the south, Edessa to the east, and the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Armenia to the northwest, depending on the date.
The County of Tripoli (1102–1289) was one of the Crusader states. It was founded in the Levant in the modern-day region of Tripoli, northern Lebanon and parts of western Syria. When the Frankish Crusaders, mostly southern French forces – captured the region in 1109, Bertrand of Toulouse became the first count of Tripoli as a vassal of King Baldwin I of Jerusalem. From that time on, the rule of the county was decided not strictly by inheritance but by factors such as military force, favour and negotiation. In 1289, the County of Tripoli fell to the Muslim Mamluks of Cairo under Sultan Qalawun, and the county was absorbed into Mamluk Sultanate.
Raymond II was count of Tripoli from 1137 to 1152. He succeeded his father, Pons, who was killed during a campaign that a commander from Damascus launched against Tripoli. Raymond accused the local Christians of betraying his father and invaded their villages in the Mount Lebanon area. He also had many of them tortured and executed. Raymond was captured during an invasion by Imad ad-Din Zengi, atabeg of Mosul, who gained the two important castles of Montferrand and Rafaniya in exchange for his release in the summer of 1137.
Pons was count of Tripoli from 1112 to 1137. He was a minor when his father, Bertrand, died in 1112. He swore fealty to the Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in the presence of a Byzantine embassy. His advisors sent him to Antioch to be educated in the court of Tancred of Antioch, ending the hostilities between the two crusader states. Tancred granted four important fortresses to Pons in the Principality of Antioch. Since Pons held his inherited lands in fief of the kings of Jerusalem, Tancred's grant strengthened the autonomy of the County of Tripoli. On his deathbed, Tancred also arranged the marriage of his wife, Cecile of France, to Pons.
Constance of Hauteville was the ruling princess of Antioch from 1130 to 1163. She was the only child of Bohemond II of Antioch and Alice of Jerusalem. Constance succeeded her father at the age of two after he fell in battle, although his cousin Roger II of Sicily laid claim to Antioch. Alice assumed the regency, but the Antiochene noblemen replaced her with her father, Baldwin II of Jerusalem. After he died in 1131, Alice again tried to take control of the government, but the Antiochene barons acknowledged the right of her brother-in-law Fulk of Anjou to rule as regent for Constance.
The count of Tripoli was the ruler of the County of Tripoli, a crusader state from 1102 through to 1289. Of the four major crusader states in the Levant, Tripoli was created last.
Tancred was an Italo-Norman leader of the First Crusade who later became Prince of Galilee and regent of the Principality of Antioch. Tancred came from the house of Hauteville and was the great-grandson of Norman lord Tancred of Hauteville.
Hodierna of Jerusalem was the countess of Tripoli through her marriage to Raymond II of Tripoli. She ruled the County of Tripoli as regent during the minority of their son Raymond III from 1152 until 1155.
Bertrade of Montfort, also known by other names, was a Norman noble from the House of Montfort. She was countess of Anjou (1089–1092) through her first marriage to Fulk the Rude and then queen consort of France (1092–1108) through her initially bigamous marriage to Philip I. Condemned in her era's ecclesiastical histories, she played a role in the popularization of pigache footwear and founded a daughter house of Fontevraud Abbey at Hautes-Bruyeres.
The siege of Edessa took place from 28 November to 24 December 1144, resulting in the fall of the capital of the County of Edessa to Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo. This event was the catalyst for the Second Crusade.
Shaizar or Shayzar is a town in northern Syria, administratively part of the Hama Governorate, located northwest of Hama. Nearby localities include, Mahardah, Tremseh, Kafr Hud, Khunayzir and Halfaya. According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Shaizar had a population of 5,953 in the 2004 census.
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Christian Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these military expeditions are those to the Holy Land between 1095 and 1291 that had the objective of reconquering Jerusalem and its surrounding area from Muslim rule after the region had been conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate centuries earlier. Beginning with the First Crusade, which resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099, dozens of military campaigns were organised, providing a focal point of European history for centuries. Crusading declined rapidly after the 15th century.
Gesta Tancredi in expeditione Hierosolymitana, also known by its full title Gesta Tancredi Siciliae Regis in expeditione Hierosolymitana, is usually called simply Gesta Tancredi, is a prosimetric history written in laconic Latin prose and episodes of verse by Norman chaplin Ralph of Caen. His text provides an exceptional narrative of the First Crusade and events the Crusade entailed, especially those that involved Tancred. It is one of only half a dozen firsthand Latin accounts of those events.
In the Battle of Ba'rin in 1137, a Crusader force commanded by King Fulk of Jerusalem was scattered and defeated by Zengi, the Atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo. This setback resulted in the permanent loss of the Crusader castle of Montferrand in Baarin.
The First Crusade march down the Mediterranean coast, from recently taken Antioch to Jerusalem, started on 13 January 1099. During the march the Crusaders encountered little resistance, as local rulers preferred to make peace with them and furnish them with supplies rather than fight, with a notable exception of the aborted siege of Arqa. On 7 June, the Crusaders reached Jerusalem, which had been recaptured from the Seljuks by the Fatimids only the year before.
The timeline of the Principality of Antioch is a chronological list of events of the history of the Principality of Antioch.
The history of the County of Tripoli, a crusader state in the Levant, spans the period between 1103 and 1289.
